Have you been solicited for a small business/professional credit card?

Hi Marv,

Yes, it’s me. I’m alive! Although I know that the evil-doers at credit card companies would probably rather have me go away, forever.

My wife is better, and I appreciate the concern you have expressed on a continual basis, following her major surgery last spring. The “Chase goons” have not done away with me. It’s a long story to catch-up. So I’ll create a short list of the highlights since my last post:

November 2009
We withdrew our real estate listing from the market because we knew we had to prepare for the fact that it might be years before the economy recovered. Thus, we needed to refinance and convert from a 5-year A.R.M. to a fixed rate mortgage. The story behind the A.R.M. and our reasons for it is also a long one. To summarize, the day we took it out we planned to sell the home in the third year. This may have been a seemingly bad plan from the perspective of the typical “I always pay cash” backseat drivers (as proof they would offer: “See, the economy went to hell-dummy!!!”). However, I wanted to put as little down as possible so as to focus on other “bad credit obligations.”

“What, you borrowed in addition to financing a house? That was also very foolish,” they would add. But, you and regular readers already know that I borrowed money for years, with the intention of going to graduate school so that I could become qualified to teach and help others. So, despite the “always pay cash” crowd’s holier-than-thou attitude or the fact that I would not have made it through school at all without borrowing, I had my own reasons. (I admit that while I think I did the right thing in the long run, the “education” I received has been both in my courses and through the long struggle to recover financially.) Anyway, there’s apparently a ninety day waiting period to refinance if a home has been on the MLS (I have no idea why).

Winter break (December – January 2009/2010)
We retrieved personal belongings that had been stored in three different storage units, in two states. The things in NC had been moved there in August 2008, to the condo we leased. We did that because we had already packed the vast majority of our personal property while our home was under a real estate sales contract that ended up falling through. (Lesson learned: I’m not planning to pack and/or move one stick of furniture or anything else until AFTER a closing unless there is a substantial liquidated damages deposit that I can keep; real estate agents, being the spineless scum that they are in not acknowledging the high risk of not closing given the realities of today’s economy, have nothing to lose–themselves, as the only people they care about–when they write up contracts such that possession and closing fall on the same day.)

January through mid-May, 2010
Continued my commute (300 miles each way) from TN to NC, and back again, each week. Little time for anything else besides monthly oil changes, teaching, and packing, unpacking, repacking (clothes, toiletries, “travel food,” emergency gear for wintry days crossing the mountains); you get the idea. It was a really productive semester in terms of teaching and some student projects, both graduate and undergraduate (I’ll comment further and post some additional links if I find time later).

Mid-May through late June
Finally managed to unpack the things from the storage units that we moved back to the house (but did not have time to put away during the winter break). I got my home office put back together! My books, files, research, books and papers in progress — all, back within my reach, and properly organized so that I could find what I needed.

June 27 to August 20, 2010
Teaching two online Master of Entrepreneurship degree program courses. Published one scholarly journal article, and one conference paper. Working on others (it’s true, “publish or perish” is the real deal. And if it’s not a scholarly journal, then it doesn’t really count; none of what I do on this blog, counts). This should explain why I have had to shift my attention to scholarly writing (and why I’m glad I finally have my home office up and running). I am, by the way, working on a scholarly article about the economic stresses on small businesses and their use of credit cards.

July 2010
Refinanced our house (what an experience that was — ridiculous process and steps, but done). You’re old enough to know, Marv (like me), that interest rates are going to go sky-high again at some point. Our national debt, so I am told by economists who are colleagues, is severe enough that we can be likened to a third world country by virtue of some ratios. I also predict civil strife, and other upheavals if we don’t get off this present course and elect some effective leadership.

Other remarks. I suppose to some extent I deserve some “I told you so’s” relative to Congress, the C.A.R.D. ACT, and other hopes I had relative to measures that might curtail the abuses of the credit card industry. On the other hand, it’s not like I have ever trusted Congress. Not since I read an extremely well researched historical book about the beginnings of the railroads in the United States. It was remarkable, and eye-opening, to read about the way approvals for expansion into new routes seemed to coincide with certain individuals buying up land and resources in advance. (How “convenient” that investments in timber and water rights were secured beforehand, since it took a whole lot of these resources to lay miles of new track and run the trains!)

Nevertheless, I admit that I did put faith in the notion that some action on the part of Congress was better than nothing. Sadly, the loopholes are so large and transparent that I was wrong in that regard. The exclusion of so-called small business and professional credit cards was particularly disheartening to me, given my line of work teaching entrepreneurship, and relative to the way I see things as a citizen in general: If we don’t protect and nurture small businesses, our economy is doomed.

More recently, with the passage of this Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA) legislation, I was at least awakened enough to realize that whole process was highly suspect as a farce from the very beginning (I certainly don’t feel “protected,” yet). As you probably know (or recall from some of my posts), the Federal Reserve is not at all “Federal,” like the average citizen and ignorant members of the media seem to think it is. Rather, it is in effect “owned” by the major national banks–which happen to operate the credit card companies. Well, when it was announced that the CFPA would be associated with (and funded by! the FED), I knew that was tantamount to the “fox guarding the chickens.”

Meanwhile, although I have my hands full, my commitment to fighting credit card company abuses remains intact.